An Ethereum network upgrade was deployed this week as EIP-4337 went live. It ushers in a number of improvements for the Ethereum ecosystem.
On March 1, EIP-4337 deployed on the Ethereum mainnet heralding a new token standard – ERC-4337. The token standard implementation was initially proposed in September 2021.
Account abstraction essentially allows Ethereum wallets to operate as programmable smart contracts. This would enable users to recover lost private keys, among other benefits.
An account abstraction proposal completely avoids consensus-layer protocol changes, instead relying on higher-layer infrastructure. It can be used on any EVM Compatible Blockchain.